Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

The Washington Post reports that Gemany's government has asked the CIA station chief in that country to leave. From the article, which points out the move comes after several high-profile instances of U.S. spying on German citiens, including Chancellor Angela Merkl:. "A day earlier, federal prosecutors in Germany said police had searched the office and apartment of an individual with ties to the German military who is suspected of working for U.S. intelligence. Those raids followed the arrest of an employee of Germany’s foreign intelligence service who was accused of selling secrets to the CIA. ... For years, Germany has sought to be included in a group of countries with which the United States has a non-espionage pact. Those nations include Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The Obama administration and that of George W. Bush both resisted such entreaties, in part because many U.S. intelligence officials believe that there are too many areas where German and U.S. security interests diverge."

Head coach of USMNT is Jürgen Klinsmann, a German national. If anyone had access to the secrets of the World Cup, he had it. And why was the NSA not spying on him to help confirm his loyalty to the US on this important matter?

I get a feeling that overt nationalism is quite frowned upon in Germany. I have had a few German colleagues in the past who refused to even sing their national anthem. So while it is reasonably correct to assume that Germans are loyal to they own country, I don't think national pride would come in the way of Klinsmann's professionalism.

This is true for most of Western Europe, I would say. I'm not sure if it is actually reasonable, but very explicit nationalism still triggers memories of certain regrettable events in our not-that-distant past. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say many Europeans find the amount of flag-waving and anthem-singing that's on display in the US frankly shocking.

Some of us think that nationalism is a sign of immaturity. To think that because you happened to be born on the same land-mass as a bunch of other people, makes you somehow special, is just ridiculous.

In addition Jürgen Klinsmann was the head coach of the German national team. He brought a good part of the current top players together. The current coach (Joachim Löw) worked under Kliensmann. Löw basically learned his chops under Klinsmann and as such there was little the NSA could have found out that Kleinsmann did not yet know. A testament to the knowledge and talent of Kliensmann is the fact that the US team got so far. (2:1 against Germany is not bad either.)

As a disappointed England supporter, I wish that our team had put in even half the effort of the US team. It especially annoyed me when they put in a lack-lustre performance in their third match because they were already out - if you're a professional footballer (soccerer) and you're playing for your country at the world cup, I don't understand how you can not be excited and thrilled to show your mettle.

You may or may not have noticed that the US press hasn't mentioned the name of the departing CIA Station Chief, but they haven't. Why not? Because it's A Secret! The Germans know who they're kicking out, but the US press goes along with the pretense that it's secret, and other people he might spy on in the future won't know he's a spy, and people who he's hung out with in the past might be exposed as having been spies too. In some cases it's illegal for US government officials to reveal the names of spi

like Scooter Libby outing Valerie PlameYou misspelled Richard Armitage. Btw, no one was convicted of outing Valerie Plame, Scooter was convicted of lying to investigators, and his prison sentence was commuted, not pardoned.

Germany wants its own gov staff back. Germany wants its own trade deals in private. Germany wants its science and banking back. Germany wants its telco sector back. Germany wants its staff to be good Germans, not more loyal to "Five Eyes" plus other nations every working day. Germany wants its own domestic and foreign policy back from the US and UK.
Setting up 'manipulate them through false information instead?" is tricky as West Germany found out. If the staff around your top political leaders work

While you can negotiate a trade deal privately, it's pretty much impossible to operate one privately. After all, at least one other country has to know the details, and most (if not all) of the economic effects are easily detectable....

No they don't. The supreme court actually has something to say in Germany, and its constitution is pretty strong (also in practice) w.r.t. privacy and citizens rights. I'm not german myself (but living near germany). My impression, also from German newspapers etc., is that most germans including politicians are truely mad and are seriously considering to cool down relations with the USA. The USA is risking to loose one of the few remaining friends it has in the world.

What they can do is to force the closing of one or two US Army intalations in Germany [wikipedia.org]. Although no real impact if they pick carefully, it would send an extremely serious message on a political level.

The last "Israeli spy" I remember hearing about was actually someone who volunteered to spy for the Israeli's. The Israeli's made agreeable sounds and then called the US State department or whoever to notify them that they had been approached by so-and-so who was offering to spy for them.

Some Russians were caught who were acting as couriers for real spies here in the USA. And there was some acknowledgement from the NSA awhile back that they knew or assumed they had at least one Russian spy on the inside tha

The Obama administration and that of George W. Bush both resisted such entreaties, in part because many U.S. intelligence officials believe that there are too many areas where German and U.S. security interests diverge."

How about getting rid of that United States base in Germany? A move like this would be in the right direction.

Did I mention that Slashdot should at least try getting world leaders' name spellings correct? Anyone also sees this unfortunate Merkl spelling in the introductory piece>?

Not going to happen. The US bases bring in a lot of money to Germany. Also, the Germans are in on it too. This is just a dog and pony show to pretend they're doing something about spying.

It's a tad more than that. These agreements are NOT equal. Germany knows there's nothing they can do about the US spying so they try to co-operate to avoid being targeted themselves. But really it's kind of an Uncle Tom situation, they thought they'd found a way into the house, but really they're getting whipped in the end just as bad as everyone else.

Re Germans would riot (literally) if the US planned to close the base. It is a huge source of jobs, jobs that would otherwise go to US contractors but instead go to local German contractors.
UK and US sites have closed. The locals are unhappy but decades later an understanding of what been occupied is really all about is emerging.

When the Germans discovered that the NSA had bugged Angela Merkel's phone, Obama kinda sorta said, "sorry", and it looked like the whole matter would have been forgotten. I would have thought that Obama would have told his spooks to lay off for a while. But instead, it seems that he has racketed up the spying on Germany.

Can someone tell me what Obama is trying to achieve by this? I mean, there must be some purpose behind all this. I just can't figure it out.

You may not know this, but the President of the United States doesn't have an office in the NSA, and doesn't have direct access to their leadership or decision-making.

So no, Obama isn't trying to achieve anything, as it is somebody else doing it.

Being able to fire the person at the top gives limited control in certain types of circumstances. In a regular business it means you have a lot of control over a department. But even a large corporation, you might not be able to succeed at getting things done the way you want just by firing department heads; and there is a cost to morale in attempting it.

In the case of Government, the workers are the same under one President and the next, and they can drag their feet and wait-out a President who tries to micro-manage them. But also, appointing department heads for a President is a political act, it has real cost, and if you try to do it with a weak hand then Congress will win that battle. Also, the departments have entrenched support from Congress-critters that have been in place longer than the President and will be in place after his terms expire.

You just can't use a small-business-owner model of Control to understand the powers of the President here. He's the one that has to explain the policies to the people, but in Intelligence and Law Enforcement, Congress has erected barriers to direct Presidential control. People often imagine that the President can just walk into any department and look at anything and order anybody around, but actually he's not a dictator, and can only move the levers of power that are provided.

Like all large organizations, bureaucracies are hard to change and are resistant to political direction, which makes them difficult to control from the executive, but a determined and capable president can ultimately impose his will on them.

Said someone about every president since WW2. You guys elected him twice, collectively you fucking love the guy.

Hey, don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!!

:)

But seriously, I used to think Carter was the worst, and I wasn't terribly happy with Bush Jr., but Obama, ugh.

I used to think it was just his agenda, but I'm starting to think it is more fully explained by incompetence. I used to joke and ask my friends that voted for him "How's that Hope and Change" working out for you.

What people fail to look at during the campaigns is what circles does this guy run in?...who is he going to put in his Cabinet? It's not about electing the figurehead, it's all about who's going to be pushing the agendas.

FWIW, I agree with you on Carter, Bush, and Obama, all incompetent...I'll give Carter the title of nicest guy though.

I mean, so far, in the polls, he's already being rated as the worst president since WW2.

I'm not fan of Obama, but I'm suspicious about the results of that (single) survey. 35% of respondents rated Reagan as the best president since WW2, followed by Clinton (18%), Kennedy (15%), and Obama (8%). On the other side, 33% said Obama was the worst, followed by GWB (28%), Nixon (13%), and Carter (8%). As far as "worst president" goes, it looks like recent memory plays more of a role than anything the guys actually did. Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, the 3 directly after WW2, got 0-1% of the vote

Then there is a growing number of Americans who are prejudiced about blacks/democrats/liberals, take your pick, or have -no idea- about history, politics and governing. In these difficult times of wars and crisis, Obama is one of the best presidents Americans could have hoped for. Better than most of your clueless American public deserves.

Initially, there had been talk of a formal expulsion of the CIA employee, who is officially accredited as the so-called chief of station and is responsible for the US intelligence service's activities in Germany. A short time later, the government backpedalled and said it had only recommended that he leave. Although it cannot be compared with a formal explusion, it remains an unfriendly gesture.

On a diplomatic level, it is no less than an earthquake and represents a measure that until Thursday would have only been implemented against pariah states like North Korea or Iran. It also underscores just how deep tensions have grown between Berlin and Washington over the spying affair.

The USA's response has been something along the lines of "you expected us not to conducting traditional spying activities?"

The Gestapo actually wasn't that good at spying. The German people were, however, quite good at turning their neighbors in to the Gestapo. There's a lot of myth concerning the Nazi police force. It's unfortunate that even today people repeat it without thinking.

I lived under a communist regime with a gestapo like secret police. It is quite true that everyone spied on everyone else but that was because of fear and intimidation tactics used by the regime. They didn't simply punish whoever they though was a threat to them, family, friends even neighbors if not sent to interment camps outright, would be punished with difficult jobs in far away regions, denied schooling and all kinds of other punitive measures. The only way to escape this fate was for them to be convinced that you already told them everything you knew. As someone with what they called a "unclean biography" because of a great uncle that had immigrated to the United States, I know full well how much suffering a totalitarian state can impose without the use of imprisonment.

No they shouldn't be punished forever, but we probably should keep an eye on them forever.

So who do you suggest should keep an eye on the United States, for it's history of genocide, slavery, imperialism, and overthrowing democratically elected governments? You'd need quite a team for that job.

The U.S. never enacted the Indian Removal Act [wikipedia.org], stole the land from the Native Americans and never forced them into reservations, which would be considered ethnic cleansing by today's standards (and thus the Bureau of Indian Affairs never formally apologized [tahtonka.com]). The U.S. never forced the Cherokee to leave Georgia in the Trail of Tears [wikipedia.org]. The U.S. never fought the Seminole Wars whose only reason was to subjugate the different seminole tribes and force them out of Florida. The U.S. never comitted Sand Creek Massac [wikipedia.org]

Germany had three regimes following each other which thought that wholesale spying on the population somehow keeps things in check. And the result was two World Wars and the breakdown of all three regimes.

The U.S. believes that spying on the whole world somehow gives them early warnings, and they managed to completely miss the Korean War, the German Wall, the Cuba Crisis, the reconquest of South Vietnam by the Vietcong, the end of the Somoza Regime in Nicaragua, the polish Solidarnosc, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent dissolution first of nearly all communist regimes and then the Soviet Union, the conquest of Kuwait by Iraq, 9/11, Somalia, the Arabian Spring, the turning of the Arabian Spring into a strengthening of the extreme wahhabitian Islam, the ISIL conquest of North West Iraq, the annection of Crimea, and the pro-russian uprising in the eastern Ukraine.

But they were pretty sure they find Weapons of Mass Destruction in post Gulf War Iraq.

Somehow the whole spying does not yield the expected results. I wonder if still more spying and mass surveillance will solve this. And more IT infrastructure to dig through the data. And still more money to pay more analysts. And do everything to weaken any attempt to make communication secure.

Most of European countries used to be vassals to US and if US spies were found, Europeans used to sweep such fiascos under the rug. This is changing now. My suspicion is that this is related to strong arm tactics of US government (if not outright bullying, eg. ACTA, now TISA, BNP Paribas etc.) and other fiascos (NSA, and now all this Ukraine/Russia fiasco, caused almost entirely by US neocons). My feeling is that European countries are now in the process of breaking out from strong US influence as they recognized USofA is actually not their friend. Russia might also be involved, assisting core EU countries in delicate path of reducing their political subordination to Washington. Note that France is also increasingly defying Washington orders (Mistral contract) despite of heavy bullying (BNP Paribas case), with top french politicians and central bankers talking openly about getting rid of dollar in international trade. Great Britain and Poland are the only countries trying to wreak as much havoc as possible in this process. Should this process go on for a while, it would force USofA to abandon its imperial project, reform itself and start behaving like ordinary country which would be good thing for everyone, especially Arabs/Ukrainians and ordinary Americans themselves.

Given that we may be nearing some energy crisis you could think about what it might cause. Looking for it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org] you can find talk about decentralization which means a break up of a system into smaller units. I think this is what might be happening, Europe is basically used up having an aging populace and diminishing resources, whereas Asia has lots of young people and some ambition to get their hands on resources. Since there have been signs in the past that energy demand ha

Re 'My feeling is that European countries want to be friends with the US, because otherwise they get bullied by Russia."
The EU had 2 options - find its own oil and gas globally in the 1950's-70's and undercut protected US/UK oil brands with all the distant start up costs.
Enrico Mattei views on big oil and finding Italy much needed cheap energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Option two was buy gas from the Soviet Union at set rates with new pipelines.
The Soviet Unio

No, this is british/american propaganda. WW1 was procured by Great Britain - british politicians at the time quote openly stated that WW1 is about extending British Empire for another 100 years. So they needed to destroy Germany that started outcompeting Britain in economic and industrial terms. They also managed to destroy Russsia in this process. WW2 was just part 2 of WW1 - peace conditions imposed on Germany guaranteed that and US bankers / corporations even helped bringing Hitler to power. Keiser was t

You just outed our spies in your network and you expect us to sign a no-spy list? Come again when we have undermined your security enough that you're as safe as the other countries we pretty much already own.

In other words, we'll only not spy on you if you hand over what we want willingly.

Wouldn't the existance of spies be the reason for a "no-spy list?" I mean if you're not spying on each other anyways, then why waste time and money negotiating that? Seems to be a required precondition.

This proves the status quo is spying, therefore the premise of a no-spy list is valid.

Without generating some type of comparison chart, I Googled multiple variations of who spies on who. Spies caught, spy agencies....etc.And the winner of my informal who spies upon whom poll......Somalia! With no official Government they have no official spy agency.Don't want to be spied on by your government you live under, this appears to be the place.it seems that every modern country has been caught in some capacity.(This was not a thorough nor proper search, just an hour of casual searching, so I know s

Most countries do have spy agencies. And they often do have some reasons for that. But do they spy on their allies? Do they spy on general public? Care to to link some info about countries that do the spying and that are not in G8 and are not China or Korea?

Sure, you were joking. But you are just trying to show that "everybody does it". The point is not only that that is not an excuse. The point is that it is not even remotely true.

It's never about the moral high-ground. It's always about diplomatic leverage.

This excludes actions by populist elected bodies or particularly fickle monarchs. But in general if one nation is doing something to another nation, it's maneuvering by state and intelligence departments.

This is pure show. They kicked the station head out, not the entire CIA. The station will continue doing what it is doing because it gets orders from higher up the chain. They know this but it makes good political theater and appears like something was done for the populace to be appeased.

The US does it too. The IRS commissioner (Steven Miller) who supposedly resigned because of the so called scandals was quitting anyways. It was just show.

Not only is this hypocrisy, but they are using a single person as a scapegoat for what is obviously an institutional problem. Sending one guy away when the BND and Bundespost work directly with the NSA will not fix a damn thing.

I truly hope that German citizens keep up the pressure to force a real change and don't accept this token arrangement as a "fix" to the institutional problems. Fortunately Germans are more aware of politics and games than Americans.

They can't do that to "legal" agents. "Legal" agents are US Embassy employees recognized by the host government as diplomats with immunity. "Legal" agents usually have some silly, trivial sounding titles, like, "The Under-Secretary for Cultural Exchange". But their real job is gathering intelligence, and the host country knows that and tolerates it. These folks are quite easy to spot: Just look for someone who is obviously way to intelligent and clever for his job. Like someone with a Ph.D. in international affairs from Harvard and Yale who is doing clerical work at the embassy.

Lots of intelligence work is actually quite boring, and not the James Bond stuff that you expect. The agents collect and assess political sentiment and economic developments and trends in that country. The CIA gives the President of the US a short briefing every morning for breakfast, and informs him if something is amiss somewhere in the world that needs his immediate attention. During this meeting the President also instructs them which areas he thinks need their "special attention".

This is definitely regular international diplomacy stuff.

When countries who aren't quite on the most friendliest of terms get in a huff, like Russia and the US . . . they will take turns tossing out some of each others' small fry "legals" described above.

The occasional persona non grata happens.

The CIA Station Chief is not an occasional persona. That's usually taboo among allies. Russia knows who the CIA Station Chief is in Moscow. But they do not toss him out. The US knows who the SVR Resident is in Washington, as well . . . and leave him alone.

Tossing out the CIA Station Chief is a serious diplomatic escalation, which is why it is getting so much press coverage.

Oh, here's an interesting Pro-Tip: If a foreign diplomat wants to hand you a piece of paper with an explanation of why their country just did something very nasty . . . you don't touch it. You instruct him to read it out loud. If you put your hands on it, his country will report that you "accepted" the explanation. If you don't, you will only hear in the news that the diplomat "read out load" or "recited" the explanation. This is the next thing that you will hear about this, as the professional diplomats from Germany and the US try to paper over the cracks left by the spooks.

These folks are quite easy to spot: Just look for someone who is obviously way to intelligent and clever for his job. Like someone with a Ph.D. in international affairs from Harvard and Yale who is doing clerical work at the embassy.

A doctorate level degree does not make you intelligent or clever. And what is the point in not explicitly naming the station chief if they are so easy to spot?

Oh, here's an interesting Pro-Tip: If a foreign diplomat wants to hand you a piece of paper with an explanation of why their country just did something very nasty . . . you don't touch it. You instruct him to read it out loud. If you put your hands on it, his country will report that you "accepted" the explanation. If you don't, you will only hear in the news that the diplomat "read out load" or "recited" the explanation. This is the next thing that you will hear about this, as the professional diplomats from Germany and the US try to paper over the cracks left by the spooks.

Say what? They can't hand each other pieces of paper or they are "accepting" explanations? Do you have some sort of reference for this? This is the most asinine thing I have ever heard, and I have never seen a news story or report where it mentioned a diplomat "recited" or "read out load [sic]" anything. By your explanation everything would have

and yet, Germany knew that we were in fact, spying on their citizens and giving German gov. information. For starters, we have stopped several AQ attacks on them because of that.
What they DID NOT know, was the spying on their gov, which I have to say was surprising.

It's not in Germanys interest to weaken the American economy... That would hurt them just as bad...

I'm pretty sure no European country even wants to indicate that they want to mess with the US economy... Not because they are scared of a US response. But because they don't want to weaken the world economy, upon which many European countries depend.

If Germany made thebUS dollar fall even more. That would hurt the European economy and weak EURO economies would need further bail outs...

That is the short term result a major economic crisis in the US would have.
Yes, nobody wants that...
I dislike the US for many of the crimes your government is actively committing in the US and around the world. And I want the US to fix these issues, not go down some dark bottomless hole of political chaos.
Negotiations in a modern world is always about power... Too many nations are too powerful for this to be a viable option.

Germany's government was perfectly fine with the NSA's surveillance until they found out they were being spied on too. It's faux outrage meant to deflect people's attention from them being in bed with the NSA for years.

Actually, it's the German population which has a problem with being spied on. And they were pressuring the government again and again no longer to tolerate it. Being spied on is an issue that has grown in importance within one year that now the German government has to fear to lose the next elections if they don't do anything about it. And that's exactly how it is supposed to work.

Germans have always had more of an issue with "being spied on" than others do. For example, Germany is one of the only countries in which taking a picture with others on it is illegal unless you've got permission from all subjects!

Also, Germans have major issues with Google Streeview and they were the ones that sued Google for receiving their wifi-broadcasts.

But, Germany wants to be part of the "special club" that has been US, GB, Canada, Australia, New Zealand for sharing SIGINT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... [wikipedia.org] But, most of those are just part of the UK, and they speak English [more or less:-)], so Germany can never really be "one of the good ole boys"...

Re "And yet their own intelligence agencies have no issue with sharing and working with the NSA."
The West German "intelligence agencies" grew out of ww2 - some where never vetted, some had their files lost or re written, some where invited in due to needed Soviet skills- no questions asked.
Over time they selected new staff, where exposed due to their ww2 crimes or retired. The next generation was guided into a world of expensive technology to help the NSA, CIA and GCHQ understand and shape the West Germa

Yes, and? What's your point? The US and Germany are allies, it makes sense to share intelligence with allies. What doesn't make as much sense and undermines trust is spying on the administration and institutions of your allies.

First of all: Germany is no longer an occupied state, independently of what you think.
Second: Of course Germany can do it. What will the U.S. do to retaitiate? Occupy Germany again? To what result? And is it worth it? Losing all the business in Germany? Losing all the taxes the U.S. earns from doing business with german companies?

Funny, I heard this bullshit when I was stationed there ('79-'81 Air Force), and from my landlord's son, to which I responded..."If we're occupying, why am I paying rent to your father?". It's not an occupation anymore when you can be asked/forced to leave, and that was the case even back then.

As to why the 'cheap shot', it's because Obama has been expanding upon many of Bush's most-hated policies. In his campaign speeches, he promised to scale back the War on Terror, close Gitmo and rein in the surveillance apparatus. He has done none of these things, and has indeed intensified those efforts.

You sound like a typical Democrat voter: anyone who disagrees with the Democrat party line is automatically a "nutcake gun-owning, violent conservative", Obama somehow isn't at fault for anything his administration does but Bush can be blamed for all current Democrat policies, and calling Obama on his pro-Bush policies is somehow "hatred of technology and science" and makes one a Holocaust denier.

Honestly, I used to think the Republicans were the nutty ones, but these days I'm starting to believe it's reall

| The Obama administration and that of George W. Bush both resisted such entreaties, in part because many U.S. intelligence officials believe that there are too many areas where German and U.S. security interests diverge."

This is a euphemism for saying "we believe that the German intelligence department is significantly penetrated by the Russian FSB".

Of course the German intelligence apparatus also spies on US, and France and UK, as they all do to one another.